As soon as I knew I would be writing a piece for the installation of the new organ at St. James the Greater in Oklahoma City, I looked up scriptural references about this church’s namesake. The first thing that struck me was that Jesus gave St. James and his brother St. John a rather peculiar nickname in St. Mark’s gospel - Boanergés (“sons of thunder.”)  This was likely due to their fiery temperaments. In St. Matthew’s gospel, Jesus called to these brothers from the shore of the Sea of Galilee while they were fishing with their father, and they immediately followed Him. St. Luke’s gospel tells us they and St. Peter alone witnessed Jesus's Transfiguration. And in the Acts of the Apostles, St. James was the first apostle to be martyred. 
 
This piece tells the story of this dynamic man who goes through a conversion from a temperamental fisherman to a close confidant of Jesus who is willing to die to spread the Gospel.  It also continues a tradition of using chant as a motivic basis for its separate movements. I used the 12th-century chant “Congaudeant Catholici,” which was sung in honor of St. James at another church that bears his name, Santiago de Compostela in Spain. 
 
In the first movement, “Boanergés,” we hear an altered version of this chant delivered in frenzied statements, beginning with two voices representing St. James and St. John. This is before their encounter with Christ, and the music represents their “thunderous” personalities in its wild harmonic and melodic nature, which lacks any true tonal center.
 
The second movement, “A Voice from the Shore,” is much gentler than the first. It begins with three statements of different 7-tone chords representing the Holy Trinity, followed by a single descending voice. This is the voice of Christ calling from the shore over the undulating waves of the sea beneath. 
 
The final movement, “The Way,” has the energy of the first movement but, like St. James, it has converted from anger and fear to joy, hope, and love. This conversion is represented musically as the opening melody of this movement, which is heard in the pedals, is an inversion of the melody used in the frenetic first movement.